I sniffed around a little bit and found that to be included in the DSM the following criteria must be met: - symptoms severe enough to cause impairment or distress - sufficiently different from categories of illness already included - demonstration that the new diagnosis will not generate false positives - absence of political sensitivity
Yes, all four criteria MUST be met, IIRC.
And that's where the lack of DSM filing is not so interesting. For one, many recognizable MLC symptoms CLOSELY MATCH other conditions already in the DSM.
The difference being, the conditions the symptoms match are generally chronic, whereas the MLCer did not show the symptoms prior to their believe decent into MLC, or the symptoms were not chronic prior, although varying degrees of mild behaviours may have been present.
So IMHO, that MLC is NOT in the DSM is as I said, not very interesting. Rather, denying it is real BECAUSE it is not in the DSM is quite misleading.
What I DO find interesting is, as jack suggested, the professionals appear split on it. So is it simply rationalized as the professionals are really only seeing it as a monetary gain, whereby they get more hours of billable therapy or more prescription pills sold? I think more pills sold might be more profitable whereby the professionals can both bill for hours AND pills.
The approach MWD appears to take in DB regarding MLC is consistent with other MLC believers that while some efforts are the same, there are differences.
